Abortion rights demonstrators rally before heading into a hearing on abortion regulations for North Carolina in Raleigh last week. (AP Photo/Jonathan Drew)

(Newser)
–
A North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to show and describe an ultrasound to the pregnant woman is "ideological in intent" and violates doctors' free-speech rights, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that the law goes far beyond what most states have done to ensure that a woman gives informed consent to an abortion. "While the state itself may promote through various means childbirth over abortion, it may not coerce doctors into voicing that message on behalf of the state in the particular manner and setting attempted here," he wrote.

The North Carolina law would have required abortion providers to display and describe the ultrasound even if the woman refused to look and listen—a mandate that the court found particularly troublesome. Virginia, South Carolina, and West Virginia, which also are part of the 4th Circuit, have ultrasound laws that do not include the same speech requirement as the North Carolina statute and therefore do not appear to be affected by the ruling. North Carolina Rep. Ruth Samuelson, a Republican and a primary sponsor of the 2011 law, said she strongly disagreed with the court's finding and stressed that other parts of the legislation are still in effect.

Yes, the Pro Birth lobby loves every child with all their heart and soul right up to the moment it draws it first breadth. Then that child becomes a burden on society not worthy of a penny of tax money being spent for it's feeding, care or education.

kumatose

Dec 23, 2014 8:31 AM CST

The republicans cry about how nobody follows the Constitution, but insidiously use legislation to shove their religious dogma up any vagina they can get it into. And then they demean anybody who points out their relentless war on women. Why do any women vote republican?

JackNelsonSteward

Dec 23, 2014 7:17 AM CST

Sooner or later the courts will have to encounter the fact that these laws have nothing whatsoever to do with serving women. They serve one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to make abortion as remote and difficult to obtain as possible. What they actually are, are legal obstructions. They are infringing on women's Constitutional sovereignty. As such, they are impermissible. The State may not act in such a way. The Courts must abandon the pretense that the State is not deliberately infringing on women's rights and sovereignty for the specific purpose of regulating that sovereignty and limiting those rights. The pretense that these regulations are in any way matters of "public safety" is now so transparently false that it can no longer be ignored.